Ever feel that your life has been a series of zigs and zags? That only rarely has it progressed in a straight line along a single plane?
In 1905 Albert Einstein wrote a paper that explained Brownian movement. The movement is a series of zigs and zags of inorganic particles suspended in a liquid. Robert Brown’s experiments in 1828 characterized the microscopic process, but no one explained it until Einstein addressed the problem. Essentially, Einstein explained the zigs and zags as the result of random “pushes” by water molecules or groups of water molecules. If the average motions cancelled one another as molecules bounced off all sides of a small object, such as a pollen grain, then occasionally, there must be a random fluctuation during which those “groups” bang more on one side than on the other side, effecting a net movement. In other words, the statistical average movements that ordinarily does not concentrate an unbalanced push was interrupted by a few renegade molecules.
From a skyscraper, you can observe crowds of people as they move to cross busy streets when a “Walk” sign lights up. The crowd moves in a uniform direction but can sometimes be interrupted by a group of people moving counter to the general trend or by a driver who wants to make a turn into the crosswalk. From your high perch, you could observe a zig-zagging in the crowd, the result of that random fluctuation—the group or the driver.
That’s your life, isn’t it? You move along doing mostly what it is that you do, moving in a straight line until some random fluctuation—an accident, a denial, an illness, a downsizing, a loss—changes the direction of your movement. Impinged upon, your life then becomes a “Brownian movement.”
Immersed in the “sea of life,” in the human medium, you will inevitably experience the impingement caused by some random fluctuation. You, and almost everyone else, including me, might tend to respond negatively to a disruption of stability, to an imposed need to change course. That is probably natural, but there is a way to handle fluctuations emotionally.
Although I’m an advocate of anticipating as much as possible (What you anticipate is rarely a problem), I know that random fluctuations are unavoidable. But our lives are more than those temporary zigs and zags; our lives are greater, are characterized by that statistical average. We do make it across most crosswalks without interference. We do move in straight lines for most of our lives.
Looking down from a figurative skyscraper onto your life movements in the “sea of humanity” and the media of your career and relationships, what do you see? Have those Brownian zigs and zags become the focus of your memories or has the stability been your focus?
Think at the end of the day, “Have my failures really outnumbered my successes? Have the zigs and zags of the day really changed the overall direction of my life? Has a particular zig or zag actually set me on a new straight-line course with opportunities that I would not have experienced had the random fluctuation not occurred?”
In 1905 Albert Einstein wrote a paper that explained Brownian movement. The movement is a series of zigs and zags of inorganic particles suspended in a liquid. Robert Brown’s experiments in 1828 characterized the microscopic process, but no one explained it until Einstein addressed the problem. Essentially, Einstein explained the zigs and zags as the result of random “pushes” by water molecules or groups of water molecules. If the average motions cancelled one another as molecules bounced off all sides of a small object, such as a pollen grain, then occasionally, there must be a random fluctuation during which those “groups” bang more on one side than on the other side, effecting a net movement. In other words, the statistical average movements that ordinarily does not concentrate an unbalanced push was interrupted by a few renegade molecules.
From a skyscraper, you can observe crowds of people as they move to cross busy streets when a “Walk” sign lights up. The crowd moves in a uniform direction but can sometimes be interrupted by a group of people moving counter to the general trend or by a driver who wants to make a turn into the crosswalk. From your high perch, you could observe a zig-zagging in the crowd, the result of that random fluctuation—the group or the driver.
That’s your life, isn’t it? You move along doing mostly what it is that you do, moving in a straight line until some random fluctuation—an accident, a denial, an illness, a downsizing, a loss—changes the direction of your movement. Impinged upon, your life then becomes a “Brownian movement.”
Immersed in the “sea of life,” in the human medium, you will inevitably experience the impingement caused by some random fluctuation. You, and almost everyone else, including me, might tend to respond negatively to a disruption of stability, to an imposed need to change course. That is probably natural, but there is a way to handle fluctuations emotionally.
Although I’m an advocate of anticipating as much as possible (What you anticipate is rarely a problem), I know that random fluctuations are unavoidable. But our lives are more than those temporary zigs and zags; our lives are greater, are characterized by that statistical average. We do make it across most crosswalks without interference. We do move in straight lines for most of our lives.
Looking down from a figurative skyscraper onto your life movements in the “sea of humanity” and the media of your career and relationships, what do you see? Have those Brownian zigs and zags become the focus of your memories or has the stability been your focus?
Think at the end of the day, “Have my failures really outnumbered my successes? Have the zigs and zags of the day really changed the overall direction of my life? Has a particular zig or zag actually set me on a new straight-line course with opportunities that I would not have experienced had the random fluctuation not occurred?”
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